Rhetoric, Doctrine, and Moral Accountability
The text treats words as instruments of power that carry moral weight. Debates over inaugural phrasing, a leaked draft of doctrine, and the search for language that can legitimately name U.S. action reveal how rhetoric can both clarify moral purpose and expose leaders to political and ethical risk. Characters struggle over authorship, ownership, and the consequences of turning aspirational language into policy — the more exalted the rhetoric, the sharper the accountability it demands.
Events Exemplifying This Theme
On the morning of the inauguration the President's world narrows to two brutal facts: his bold foreign-policy restatement has leaked and a covert 'forced depletion' inquiry into mass atrocities in …
President Bartlet rejects the State Department's cautious inaugural phrasing and pushes for a clear, morally freighted foreign‑policy doctrine while morning levity (a poetic Chief Justice, a missing Washington Bible) punctuates …
Toby discovers—and amuses himself by pointing out—that the Chief Justice's dissent is written in trochaic tetrameter, prompting a bemused Oval Office riff. The moment functions as comic relief but also …
A light, humanizing moment — Donna delivers inaugural tickets and riffs on Jack Reese's ornate uniform — abruptly pivots into political triage. When Donna reports calls from the State Department, …
Will reads aloud a long-stricken Bartlet passage that reframes U.S. action around values rather than narrow interests. Toby recognizes the language as a 16-year-old Bartlet draft and warns there was …
In Toby's office Will reads a values-driven foreign policy—language drawn from a struck Bartlet speech—and a charged argument erupts over authorship, authority, and consequences. Toby reacts like a guardian of …